Twins, especially before they learn to speak our language, seem to share their own secret language, and communicate in ways that outsiders cannot understand. The two boys in the video clip below (well worth watching, even apart from its adorableness) also demonstrate that the words spoken in a conversation are much less important than we think they are. Perhaps intelligible language even distracts us from understanding the real substance of a conversation. When the words are unintelligible, that allows us to observe more closely the gestures and facial expressions that constitute most of the real communicating that people engage in. I might be fascinated by this video because I have twins of my own (teenagers now), and I still remember […]

I did some posts this week on my political blog, trying to understand why voters seem so angry this campaign season. After trotting out some of the usual suspects like our dysfunctional government, and the economy, I turned to the touchier subjects of intolerance, racism and xenophobia. We certainly have a lot of problems to deal with in our country right now, but my mind keeps returning to the question of why we need to react to those problems with anger and recrimination. Didn’t we, less than two years ago, embrace the promise represented by the Obama campaign, of trying to approach our problems with a spirit of cooperativeness and inclusiveness? A majority of the country actually elected a […]

One of the more interesting courses I took in law school was International Law, which is not a course that everyone takes, because it does not appear to offer much practical value for most lawyers’ careers. I didn’t see much practical value in it either when I signed up, but found that it got me thinking about the law in a much different way from other law school courses. What you learn when you study international law is that the system of international law is for the most part not structured as a body of statutes enacted by legislatures, or precedents handed down by judges. International law is mostly not enforced by police, or by fines, or by prison. Because […]

Joseph C. Markowitz

Joseph C. Markowitz has published this blog, focusing on mediation and other forms of conflict resolution, since 2009. Mr. Markowitz practices law under the name "Law Offices of Joseph C. Markowitz," sharing space with three other attorneys in downtown Los Angeles. He has been in practice since 1980, emphasizing employment law, intellectual property, and general business disputes. Mr. Markowitz was trained as a mediator in 1994, and has served on one state court and two federal court mediation panels, in addition to handling private mediations. He also served as president of the Southern California Mediation Association in 2014.

For more information about Mr. Markowitz’s law and dispute resolution practice, go to jcmarkowitz.com